Shepperton resident (Pharaoh’s Island) and Children’s Chari-ty, Radio Lollipop, volunteer and President, Hedley Finn, has been made an OBE for global services to supporting children in hospital and his work across healthcare in the UK, it was announced in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list for 2020. Hedley was awarded the MBE for service to charity in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List in 1992. His latest honour is in recognition of the successful international growth of Radio Lollipop and his work in developing the service in 36 hospitals, across five countries. Ra-dio Lollipop and the amazing volunteer teams have now reached and worked with over 10 million sick children and their families in hospital, around the world over the last 40 years. “I am so humbled and grateful to be awarded this prestigious honour which I graciously accept on behalf of our dedicated volunteers past and present, and the hundreds of thou-sands of children who bravely face needles, stitches, surgeries and cancer treatments eve-ry year.” “It is such an amazing privilege to have my role and to make a difference in the lives of sick children and their families”. As a volunteer himself from the very begin-ning, Hedley has dedicated his life to grow-ing and expanding the charity’s service inter-nationally with the aim of reaching every sick child in hospital. Radio Lollipop currently has over 1,600, trained volunteers working worldwide to brighten the hospital stay for many sick chil-dren and their families. Now an award-wining, volunteer-run and managed charity, Hedley has led the develop-ment of an operating model that has had the flexibility to adapt to local environments and to changes in healthcare and tech-nology. “Hospitalisation can be an extremely isolat-ing and traumatic ex-perience for children who often won’t un-derstand why they are there or what is hap-pening to them. And, it is equally traumatic for the parents and siblings of the sick child,” Mr Finn said. “We work with children who are experienc-ing life changing or life limiting issues and illness, and for some, end of life care, and we work to ‘normalise’ and support their emo-tional well-being by providing a voice and a choice for these children.” “For more than 40 years, our volunteers have empowered hospitalised children in a day that is often far from normal. They can’t choose what or when to eat or whether or not to take their medicine; but they can choose their fa-vourite song or which game they would like to play.” “We know that our unique combination of music, play and engagement has a profoundly positive benefit in the healing and recovery of sick children. Helping to make the hospital-ised child feel important, involved and signif-icant as part of a wider team, can be a huge boost for so many sick children. I have had the great privilege of witnessing this first hand, time and time again year after year.”
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